


And winter, winter was her favorite season

by LuciferneverLies



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: F/F, Minor Character Death, Vampire!Kuvira, a few deaths I mean she's a vampire, romantic at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-07
Updated: 2016-06-07
Packaged: 2018-07-12 20:44:14
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,443
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7121917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LuciferneverLies/pseuds/LuciferneverLies
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>However that mattered little to her then. Her engagement, her troops, and hell even the very war she entered meant nothing to her.</p><p>It was thanks to beautiful icy blue eyes. </p><p>She remembered them clearly, she remembered that day clearly too. </p><p>Her death and rebirth.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And winter, winter was her favorite season

**Author's Note:**

  * For [DaniJayNel](https://archiveofourown.org/users/DaniJayNel/gifts).



> Korvira vamp Au. Vampire Kuvira and human Korra meet.
> 
> \- for you, bro.

The air was crisp, the sky clear, and the moon was full, bright. Snow blanketed the ground, winter had come as it had for many seasons now.

It wasn’t as harsh as she suspected. Despite it being only in the middle of the season. Except she reasoned that old souls like herself knew that winter was only its harshest during the beginning when everything died, and towards the end, for those to endure before the rebirth of life in spring.

Yet humans around her would scurry about, as they had for centuries, dreading this in-between of death and the trial before life began anew – so to speak. It baffled her still, to have lived this long. To have witnessed many season pass her by, and watch the humans around her advance.

Once upon a time she was a solider. A humbled one, she used to be. Now it felt so very long ago that her eyes hazed over. Had it truly been four hundred years of her being frozen in time? She would say it felt like not a moment had past her, but she knew it would be a lie.

Everything had changed.

Around her, within her. She was no longer the humble solider. That was stripped from her, same as her armor.

Once she was a uniter. When her kingdom was in chaos, she had brought it peace. She had intended to at least. All great leaders had their intentions, and so do the ones that history remembered as tyrants.

While she had once tried to unify her kingdom she had lost track of herself. One battle after another, she conquered each city-state she could. Maybe that’s where she lost herself, she thought as much at least. Extend a hand to help, strike those who oppose with the other.

 _Even the ones you helped_ , she reminded herself. _You struck those you helped down all in the same._

It made no difference though in the end. Just as she was to make her last conquest she was taken, lured if she were to be honest.

It shamed her, it still shamed her to this day. She was an engaged woman, even if she did no love the man she was promised to. He had loved her, of that she knew, he had a brilliant mind also, and having him by her side helped inspire her troops. Although she believed they also stayed partly out of fear.

However that mattered little to her then. Her engagement, her troops, and hell even the very war she entered meant nothing to her. It was thanks to beautiful icy blue eyes.

She remembered them clearly, she remembered that day clearly too.

Her death and rebirth.

 

* * *

 

She had been marching ahead of her army to Republic City. The very last to be conquered in her three yearlong campaign. She had her terms prepared.

 _Oh, yes_. She mused. _Surrender and kneel before the Great Uniter or my 500,000 men take this city by force_.

She remembered feeling proud. Quite certain that the city would bend to her terms. She hadn’t noticed just on the outskirts of the city that she and five of her best guards weren’t alone.

She should have known. Her gut told her as much as they grew closer. She pushed it off, believing it was her nerves finally catching up to her. It wasn’t though, but she had wished – still wished, that it was.

A woman had stumbled out of the tree line. Her guards, ever alert, drew their weapons. The woman simply waved them off chuckling. She had remembered thinking the woman to be harmless.

“I’m sorry.” The woman had said plainly. “I got lost in the forest.”

She remembered stiffly. Her guards’ unease, the way their swords still pointed at the woman before them. But she was calm then, so stupidly calm that she spoke.

“Aren’t you from the city?” her voice was accusing, maybe even condescending given that it was meant as a question.

“N-no, ma’am.” The woman said, chuckling nervously. “I’m from the Southern Water Tribe. I’ve only been in Republic City for a short time. I-I don’t know my way around just yet.”

She remembered scanning the woman then. The woman wore South Water Tribe clothes, the blue complimented her sun kissed skin. It was the woman’s eyes, however, that drew her in. They were blue, a mixture of ice and the clearest of seas.

She vaguely remembered telling her men to put down their weapons after that. She had smiled at the woman, hoping to help her relax. She didn't notice it then, not the way the woman's eyes gleamed.

Her focus was truly on the woman's entirely. Just her, not her guards around them.

She knew that was her downfall. Right then and there. Her memory hazed to nothing for a brief moment in time, parts escaped her as if they were the air around her. There, but not visible. Something to grasp, but never to hold. 

When she had come to she was no longer standing on the road leading to the Republic City. She was no longer standing either.

She was on her back against a tree truck facing the sky. Her vision had been blurred, but she felt a weight pressed against her. She had tried to struggle – remembering that she tried to push the weight off of her, but she was too light headed and her neck stung.

“You’re finally awake.”

Vague awareness had kicked in, her heart seizing in her chest. She recognized the voice, it belonged to the woman that came from the forest, and yet it was different. The voice up close had sounded like steel against granite, unpleasant against her ears.

“I’m sorry it had to come to this, but I’m thirsty.” There was a sweetness to the woman’s tone, so sickening sweet it made her stomach flop uneasily. “Your guard barely filled me, so I had to take blood from you too. It’s terrible really, being a slave to the thirst.”

She remembered grabbing onto the woman’s arm then with one of her hands. It had taken tremendous effort, but she was able to focus enough to do so. Her jaw was clenched, breath came in short puffs of smoke in the crisp air. “Wh-hat exactly d-do you m-mean?”

 “You wouldn’t believe me if I told you.” The woman said simply. “And I think I’ve taken too much blood from you. You’re dying, I’m sorry.”

“I’m supposed to unite all the kingdoms within the Earth Nation.” She had meant to say it bluntly. To laugh at the fact that this woman – this crazed woman – not only drank her blood, but had drank too much, and she was to die. Her voice was hoarse, thick with emotions that she had deemed weak. “This city was to be my last.”

“I’m afraid your journey ends here.”

“I don’t want to believe that.”

“Believe what you will. I’ve had my fill.” The woman moved then, quite fast that she almost missed it. In a blink of an eye she was sitting upright against the very tree truck she was pressed against. Looking at the woman again who had been staring at her oddly.

“Tell me your name.”

“Why?”

“I think you owe me that much.” She bit out despite the fact it was getting harder to focus on the woman. Her heart was slowing with each beat.

“I don’t owe you anything,” the woman laughed. “I drank from your men, I drank from you, but that does not mean I owe you anything. Least of all my name.”

“On the contrary you do.”

“Ever so demanding, even for a woman who’s dying. Tell me, oh confidant uniter, what difference would my name make when you’re the one who’ll seize to exist soon?”

“So I can haunt you for the rest of your life.”

“That’s a very long time I’m afraid.” The woman had smiled, wiping her lips clean of blood. “I doubt you’ll last through the change, and I have many other ghosts who haunt me.”

“What difference does it make then?” she countered. “What’s one more ghost to add?”

“Fair point.” The woman chuckled, rubbing the back of her neck. “I’m Kyoshi. And you, the Great Uniter of the Earth Kingdom, what’s your name?”

Her heart was almost done when Kyoshi had asked for her name. She could almost hear the rhythm within it dying like an open ember in rain. With her last bit of strength she looked at the woman with a glare, every ounce of hatred poured into her voice.

“Kuvira.”

Kyoshi had left Kuvira then. Just as Kuvira’s heart had stopped. Slowly Kuvira senses had left, succumbing to the darkness that engulfed her. This was it, this was death – an endless void of nothing.

Just as she had slipped away it started to snow. Kyoshi’s laughter carried with the wind, her words caressed the shell of Kuvira’s ear.

_You’ll be nothing but a memory, your shadow wouldn’t be able to haunt me._

Something had changed then. Kuvira knew it now as her rebirth, but it wasn’t exactly like being born. She had been in darkness for a time. Minutes? Hours? She didn’t know, not even now, but the noise around her had led her to wake. That she had gasped for air she no longer needed. She had still been in the forest, right where Kyoshi had left her.

Kuvira tried to analyze what it meant, this change, but something hit her quite hard. She had grabbed the tree trying to brace herself to stand, except she caused the tree to crack under her touch, and it fell down. Her focus was elsewhere, a fallen tree was the least of Kuvira’s worries. Kuvira tried to suck in a mouthful of air willing the charred feeling within it to leave.

However, it was powerful. This thirst Kuvira felt. It drove her to move. To where? Kuvira wasn’t sure at the time. All Kuvira knew was that she ran on instinct. She followed the noise around her until she caught scent of something.

 _Someone_ , Kuvira corrected herself. _Someone you were all too aware of_.

The smell was earthy. Like a fresh rainfall soaked the earth, bringing forth every scent around it. It mingled with the scent of jasmine, like the tea Kuvira had often drank in her study.

Kuvira had blanked out again. The memory lost to her even now. Her body had acted on its own, going on autopilot to sate its need. Only when Kuvira came to she realized just what she had done.

He looked back at her, dead and so very broken. His throat ripped open, blood had been seeped out. Kuvira looked around her surroundings. She was at least fifty miles away from Republish City, surrounded by dead soldiers. Her dead soldiers, no more than one hundred bodies littered the ground. Kuvira looked back down at the lifeless body in her hands.

“Baatar?”

His expression still haunted her. Kuvira didn’t love the man, but he was willing to follow her anywhere. Kuvira had gently placed Baatar’s lifeless body on the ground. Finally showing him the respect she had wished she showed him while he lived.

 

* * *

 

Kuvira remembered running after that. Kuvira ran from what she had done. She was disgusted with herself, disgusted with her lack of control. Kuvira swore to herself that day, that she would be better.

 She had spent the next century honing her skills in the darkness. After a near incident with the sun and realizing she could no longer walk under its warm protection.

She still had to drink blood to survive, and later found that she would always need to. Deplorable as it was then. Kuvira already came to terms with being a monster, and worked to control it, or at least herself.

That was until somewhere in the second century of her living she felt the pull.

It had been Kuvira’s calling. Without much thought she had followed it, finding herself within the very city she had tried to conquer. Her feet had led her. Left foot, right foot, left foot, right – until she stood outside a shop.

Her body had stiffen – making Kuvira appear almost statue like. There on the other side of the window was Kyoshi, the woman who made her into what she was. Was it fate? Kuvira wanted to doubt it, but the pull she felt made her feel something. Something she felt the moment her eyes locked with Kyoshi’s the day she killed Kuvira.

When she saw her through the window it was not hatred she felt. It made her nervous. It made her stomach flop like the first time she tried animal blood. It was disgusting, but the closest thing that explained her stomach flopping. Kuvira’s lips curved into a small smile.

Love. Or something akin to it.

That was until she saw a woman fall onto Kyoshi's lap. Kuvira wanted to guess or hope that this woman would be Kyoshi’s dinner. That didn’t seem so when Kyoshi gentle tucked the woman’s hair behind her ear, kissing her just as gentle despite the people around them.

Anger had bubbled inside Kuvira. Dueled with a feeling she was all too familiar with – jealousy. Kuvira had waited for them to leave. Kyoshi, surprisingly, hadn’t noticed her. It would seem Kyoshi was entirely focused on the woman with her.

Kuvira had stalked them as a predatory would their prey. She hid in every dark corner they passed by masking her scent with everything around her. When they reached their building Kuvira waited.

It shamed her now. When she thinks about that night. When the memory of their very screams haunt her still. It’s not like it was with Baatar. Kuvira killed him out of lack of control and a primal sort of hunger. He's a ghost who only haunted her for that reason, and that reason alone. But with Kyoshi and her lover? It was jealousy and anger. Something she could have controlled.

Kyoshi hadn’t said anything to her after she killed her lover. She didn’t want to listen to Kuvira’s reason for it either. Out of love for a woman who not only killed her, but she knew nothing about? It sounded farfetched and unlikely.

It had angered Kuvira more though, with herself. Kyoshi’s silence made her feel irrational. Killing Kyoshi, had made Kuvira numb. The pull was gone.

Kyoshi was gone.

Kuvira remembered leaving Republic City that night. Half a century spent in the Fire Nation, traveling from place to place. Another half spent in-between the Northern and Southern Water Tribes. After finding out that over a certain period of time she gained immunity towards the sun.

Kuvira could have sworn throughout her time away she saw eyes that were a mixture of ice and the clearest of seas.

Another she spent visiting all of the old Air Nomad temples before Kuvira had found herself back in Republic City. She spent two centuries avoiding it.

It was still a marvel. A true gem of modern technology and beauty. It called to her just like that pull had once.

That’s where she has been living now, for the past year. It feels longer, but Kuvira would only chalk that up as part of her illness – living for so very long can do that.

 

* * *

 

Kuvira hadn’t realized that with her reminiscing of the past that she had been walking well into the morning around the city. People were finally leaving their homes going off to work. Some gave her odd looks at the lack of warm clothing she wore – being that she was in a suit that she wore the night before, with a cloak thrown lazily on.

She paid no attention to them, enjoying the sun on her face and the crunch of the snow beneath the soles of her boots.

It must have been midafternoon when she heard the laughter. She had been walking past the police station, her loft wasn’t that far from it. The sound was joyous, wonderful even. That’s when Kuvira saw her.

She looked every bit like Kyoshi. Her breath hitched in her throat as she gravitated towards the woman. The flower vender she was speaking with gave a laugh as well before thanking her and giving the woman a bouquet of flower. Jasmines from the look of it.

Kuvira smiled softly, seeing no one else near the woman save for the vender who walked off to aid another customer.

“It’s quite beautiful, my lady. The flowers.”

 _Like you_ , Kuvira wanted to add, but knew not to be rash. She didn’t want to scare the woman off.

“My lady?” The woman chuckled turning to face Kuvira. Her smile froze a moment, trying to subtly one over Kuvira. At first Kuvira wanted to assume the woman had thought she were odd. The aroma of the woman’s growing arousal indicated something else entirely. The woman had swallowed thickly before shifting her gaze to Kuvira’s face, smiling nervously. “Thank you. The flowers are for a friend, we share the same liking for Jasmine – both the flower and the tea. She got engaged yesterday and I wanted to give her something.”

 Kuvira gave a charming grin, raising her brow slightly.

“I believe it’s best to be formal, my lady. And your friend is quite lucky.”

“Please,” the woman chuckled, this time nervously. “My name is Korra, and she is. I believe she has found her soulmate.”

“You believe in such thing as soulmates Korra?”

Kuvira noticed Korra ponder for a moment, her lips perched, before a smile overtook her features. Korra gave a smile that caused something to stir within Kuvira’s chest.

“I-uh,” Korra began, blushing faintly. “I have a poem about it if you don’t mind me sharing?”

“I’m all ears, I promise.”

“No laughter?”

“None. I swear it.”

“Alright.” Kuvira watched with unyielding attention as Korra cleared her throat. “Why think separately from this life than the next, when one is born from the last? Time is always short for those who need it, but for those who love it lasts forever.”

“That’s quite the beautiful poem Korra.”

“Thank you,” Korra smiled, less nervous now. “To answer straight forward, I do. Believe in soulmates that is.” Korra had blushed then to Kuvira’s delight. She looked down at the flowers she held before collecting herself. Kuvira watched Korra look back up at her with a kind smile. “I should get going, I need to drop these off.”

“I understand.” Kuvira smile hadn’t dropped, despite the sadness that overcame her. “It was pleasant speaking to you, my lady.”

Kuvira went to walk away. She kept her turn and pace slow. Until she heard Korra call out to her.

“Wait,” Kuvira felt Korra place her hand on Kuvira’s arm. Kuvira had turned back around just as slowly to face Korra, waiting for her to speak. “I never caught your name.”

“Kuvira.”

“That’s quite a beautiful name,” Korra admitted, blushing. “I was wondering if it isn’t too bold of me to ask if you could walk with me? I would like to speak with you some more.”

Kuvira should say no. She should think of an excuse, and leave. What stopped her from saying it was the way Korra looked at her. She could still see Kyoshi, but she knew that Korra wasn’t. Korra wasn't the woman she killed.

For that reason she should say no, but she can’t. The pull is stronger, especially being up close to Korra inhaling her scent, hearing her heart beat nervously against her ribcage. Kuvira allowed herself to relax and indulged in the sound of Korra’s heart.

“I’d be honored to Korra.” Kuvira said after a long moment. “Can you tell me more about the poem you talked about?”

“Well it involves longing,” Korra started. Kuvira watched Korra's face light up. They began walking in the direction Korra needed to head in.

The snow flurried softly around them. And Kuvira finds herself at ease for the first time in centuries. The snow giving this in-between moment a more magical feel. Not of death or the trials that follow. Just a certain kind of magic only the middle could bring, an ease.

 _And winter, winter is my favorite season_. Kuvira thought softly. The rest of the world drifted away. The middle would lead to rebirth, her journey that filled with ghosts cleansed. Kuvira knew she was still a monster, but with Korra she knew she’d feel more than that.

And Kuvira hoped to have many more winters with her. From this day until the end of time.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading, comments are welcomed here! :'D
> 
> Also the ending bit was a play off of Dracula Untold, not exact because I haven't seen the movie in ages, but the scene still sticks out to me. So, yes.


End file.
